STEM Complex

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI

175,880 gsf

$60 million

2020

The new STEM Complex consolidates a number of undergraduate teaching laboratories previously dispersed across campus, creating a central hub for STEM teaching and learning. The program includes learning spaces for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, and Engineering. The teaching labs are all designed to maximize flexibility, utilizing an overhead service grid with specially designed vertical service drops to allow table location to be reconfigured easily over time. Further, the suite of rooms includes movable walls in strategic locations so that spaces can be enlarged or subdivided as the learning needs evolve. All of the learning spaces embrace an active learning approach, emphasizing team-based learning. The STEM facilities include ample break-out and collaboration spaces to support the new team-based pedagogies.

The STEM Complex also incorporates a decommissioned, 1940’s 40,000 gsf power plant being converted into a Learning Innovation Center, Building Commons, maker spaces, student help-space, and faculty and staff offices; 175,880 gsf total; $60 million; 2020. Ellenzweig is Design Architect and Laboratory Planner, working in collaboration with IDS, Architect of Record and designer of the power plant portion of the project.